A thumb slides over the screen of the smart phone, bringing up a live stream of a news broadcast, already in progress.

"-strange new buildings, even entire cities have sprung up over night. Scientists around the world are baffled by this turn of events. Even with the strange changes to the world within the last several years, this goes beyond the appearance of men and women who can fly."

"Speaking of which, we can see an individual floating above one of the buildings in the new city. It's difficult to make out at this time, but the being appears to be . . . glowing?"

" . . . oh God. Oh God, RUN! Run before-"

There is a flash of light, and the feed goes dead.

• • • • •

Across a broken cityscape, two groups of superhumans stared down each other.

One group was lead by a man in a silvery body suit, tall and strong with golden blonde hair that matched the yellow aura playing across his body, focused on his eyes and hands. "My name is Luminary of the Vanguard. My team and I need to know what your intentions are." His voice was strong, but calm, reassuring. Almost paternal.

Across from him floated a more massively muscled man, completely bald and with a corona of blue energy playing about his body. He wore a blue and white costume bisected by a bar of gold that stretched from hip to shoulder and completely covered one arm. The shoulder of said arm bore the logo T2M. When he spoke, it was a deep, rumbling voice that carried authority and arrogance in equal measure. "Well 'Luminary', I'm Caestus Pax of Team Tomorrow, and by the power granted by the United Nations, I am declare you to be in violation of numerous trespassing and security laws. Surrender now, or be taken forcefully into custody."

Luminary's eyes glowed even brighter, his voice taking on a grim determination. "Neither of those is going to happen."

Pax smirked confidently. "Your funeral."

• • • • •

The street was filled with the bodies of bleeding and broken police officers. Over two dozen men and women, several of them part of an elite SWAT unit, now bloodied the ground around the being they'd been sent to subdue. This being was vaguely shaped like a man, but composed of what looked like liquid metal, with additional tendrils of metal lashing around it, covered in blood. The only thing not composed of metal was the jet black portion of its face, making it seemed like a helmeted visor that gave no clue as to what may lie beneath it.

"Well well well. I think I'm in love."

The metal figure turned, appendages ready to lash out again, only to pause at the sight of the new arrival. Like the first, the person floating down from the sky seemed to be composed of metal, but also crackled with a kind of electric energy. Her form also strongly suggested that of a woman, as did her voice.

The other liquid metal being hesitated a moment, then the tendrils flowed back into its body, its overall appearance becoming more roughly humanoid. "You may call me Proteus. I see you are another who gone beyond humanity, and embraced greatness."

A smile spread over Shrapnel's silver lips. "I like you more and more by the minute. Tell me, Proteus, have you ever heard of the Terragen? We've always got room for someone with your . . . talents."

Proteus' body rippled slightly, and one part of the metal near the black visor curved in a way that Shrapnel swore was a the face trying to smile.

"Tell me more."

• • • • •

He was losing himself. More and more, the being known as Antaeus was sure he was losing his connection to the rest of the world. And the scary thing was that he wasn't sure that was a bad thing.

It was to be expected, to an extent. His eruption had transformed him into a towering mass of muscled perfection who also was bright green and had plants growing out of his body. He was as much vegetable as animal at this point, maybe more. He was also one of the most powerful novas on the planet. The scope of what he was and what he could do was so immense that he'd helped turn a desert into a lush forest. It had all been to help people . . . but sometimes he wondered why he was suppose to bother helping people. There were billions of them, surely the world could do without a few of them, especially if saving them meant radically altering the planet. And then he'd realize what he'd just thought, and was overwhelmed with horror.

"GAAAAAAAAAH!" he roared to the sky, causing the ground to shake and nearby trees to twist violently in mirror of his frustration. "What's wrong with me!??!"

Then, abruptly, the trees returned to their normal forms and the ground ceased its shaking. Antaeus frowned. He hadn't been the one to do that. He looked about him, sensing a new presence, but this presence was . . . soothing. Calm. Beautiful.

The ground in front of Antaeus opened up, but instead of violently cracking, it appeared more like a gentle unfolding, like the petals of a rose made of Earth unfurling into full bloom. And from the hole that had appeared, floated up a woman of breathtaking beauty. But more than her physical beauty, Antaeus could feel the power within her. It was . . . intoxicating. He felt instantly connected to her in a way he hadn't with any other person.

"There is nothing wrong with you, my friend," she said, and her voice was like a summers breeze through the branches of willows. "You struggle with your place as a man, when you must accept you place as a god. Only then will you know your place in the world."

Despite the calm her presence gave him, Antaeus found himself tensing. "I've already told you Terragen that I'll have no part in your insanity."

The woman laughed. It was like the most beautiful music he'd ever heard. "The Terragen are angry children, using their so-called philosophy to justify whatever mad impulse they have at the time. No, dear Antaeus, I am not a part of such empty and useless violence. My name is Gaia, and I am of the Pantheon. And I am here to offer you a place among the gods of the new age. And together, we will truly heal this poor world."

She extended her hand out to him, and Antaeus had never seen anything so inviting.

• • • • •

"Well Diego, in the long list of stupid things you've done, this is probably the new number one."

The person speaking wore a blue bodysuit, with strategic body armor on the chest, arms and legs. His face was covered in a mask that gave the impression of a cat, as did the claws adorning the fingers of the mans gloves. Fingers which currently held the local crime boss Don Diego up by the throat, the don's feet several inches above the ground.

The man in blue casually dropped the man to the floor. Littered throughout the office were nearly a dozen body guards, all unconscious. "You set a trap for the Nightstalker," the costume man continued. "You left me a trail of evidence I can use to crucify you with, and practically dared me to attack your little place of power. What did you expect to happen?"

Don Diego ran a hand over his throat, and smiled up at his attacker. "Just what did happen, my friend. It was, admittedly, a bit rougher than I had hoped, but my new associate agreed to this job only if I could prove that you were a man worth his time."

At those words, a panel in the wall opened, and a figure emerged, wielding a long, metal spear in each hand. The man was covered in a black body suit, with bits of gold decorating his waist and shoulder, and on his head was a golden mask designed to evoke a human skull.

The Nightstalker turned to face this new enemy, crouched in a combat stance. "And you are?"

The other man spun his spears in a smooth, flowing and intricately complicated pattern, one that left little doubt the power and skill he possessed. "I am Totentanz. I am the hammer, the dagger, the sickle that reaps." And without another word, he lunged at the vigilante.

• • • • •

The warehouse had every appearance of being completely abandoned. It was likely it had been, at least until several days before, when it had been decided on as the place for this clandestine meeting. In the days following every effort had been made to preserve that appearance of abandonment, while subjecting it to all manner of scrutiny and security the individuals arranging the meeting could manage. And the man who had just stealthily entered the warehouse was aware of just what kind of power those people could bring.

The man appeared on the surface like any other businessman, with a dull grey suit that was given a slightly hard-boiled look by the brown trenchcoat and matching fedora. This air of investigative mystery was only enhanced by the black fabric tucked into the neck of the man's collar, which covered everything below the man's eyes. Between the mask and the shadows his hat cast, the man might as well have been faceless.

He walked almost to the center of the warehouse, hands in his pockets, standing a ways off from several shadows cast by the warehouse's interior and the various detritus scattered about.

"You wanted to speak with me," he said simply. "I'm here. Start talking."

From one of the shadows, a voice emerged, with the kind of hollowness to it that only digital distortion could cause. "Thank you for meeting with us, Enigma. You're a difficult man to track down."

"That's by design," Enigma said flatly. "But you've some experience with that yourself, don't you Miss Rousseau?"

There was a long pause before the voice spoke again. "You know who I am." It was not a question.

"Yes. I also know about the four Aberrants you have stationed around this place, including the one using their shadow powers to conceal you all. So now that you know I know, perhaps you can stop wasting my time."

There was a murmur of voices, too low for Enigma to hear, but abruptly several shadows faded, revealing three men and two women spread about the warehouse. From the shadows he'd been addressing was a strikingly handsome woman with close cut auburn hair, who was tugging off a throat microphone. Sophia Rousseau gave the coated figure a once over, saying, "I assume you've got a few contingencies in place, just in case?"

"Assume what you wish, Miss Rousseau. If they don't exist, it benefits me to let you believe that they do. If they do exist, it benefits me for you to be unaware of them. In both cases, your speculation benefits me. But these delays benefit neither of us. So again, please stop wasting my time."

A smirk crossed Sophia's features. "Very well then. My group knows you're investigating a pair of conspiracies: The Initiative and Mr. Zero. I believe that my group can help you expose them. We have resources and power that you, skilled as you are, lack. And in return, you put your unique abilities towards uncovering a conspiracy that has been a problem for me."

Enigma kept his features and surface thoughts neutral, but within the most protected parts of his mind, he grew excited. These people knew of the Initiative, and they put a name to other conspiracy he'd been investigating, the person he believed to be a conspiracy of one: Mr. Zero. His enhanced mind ran through the possibilities of this being a trap, but no. Neither conspiracy would have drawn this out this long before trying to kill him, and while Sophia Rousseau was reportedly immune to mental powers, he could read her body language like it was mile high neon letters. She was being sincere.

"What can you tell me about this third conspiracy?" he asked finally.

Sophia smiled. "We believe it's at the heart of a lot of suffering within the nova community. It's powerful, well connected and deeply entrenched, but we suffered a positive break last month that made me request this meeting. We finally have a name. The conspiracy calls itself Project: Proteus."

• • • • •

In Washington, DC, thousands of people and hundreds of cameras gazed skyward, towards the two men that floated in the air above the Nation's Capital. One wore a red, white and blue costume with a red mask and red star in the center of his chest, marking him as a true superpowered Patriot. The other wore gold and red armor vaguely reminiscent of ancient Greece or Rome, his red cape billowed about by the golden-white that surrounded them.

"Attention Divis Mal!" the Patriot yelled to the armored man. "By order of the President of the United States, you are to accompany me to ground level, power down, and surrender yourself to the American government for the crimes perpetrated by yourself and the Terregen! I am authorized to use whatever force is necessary to see to it that you comply."

A sneer crossed the face of the other man. "Of course you are. I had heard tale of America's Greatest Hero, and wished to see for myself if another god had entered the fold. Imagine my disappointment when I find a superman content to play the clown for a group of monkeys. Another Caestus Pax who dances at the whip of his baseline masters. It would swell my heart with pity if it didn't make me sick to my stomach."

One of Mal's blood-red eyebrows arched upwards, in seeming amusement. "Are you . . . threatening me?" Mal threw his head back and laughed, his short, spikey red hair looking very much like flame with the gesture. After the laughter died, he returned his gaze to the man before him, the sneer returning. "I must thank you for that. I hadn't laughed that hard in nearly a decade."

"Ten seconds," Patriot informed Mal. "Final warning."

The sneer became a scowl as energy collected around Mal's hands. "No, I believe I am done here. I came to find a god and I found merely another puppet with delusions of grandeur. My tolerance for such as you is spent this day. If you would lower yourself to their level, then I will take from you that which makes you useful to them!"

At that, Mal gestured with both hands, and white-gold energy poured forth from them in a stream that completely engulfed the Patriot, hammering him backwards through the air. The blast had the added effect of allowing Mal to connect with his targets Node, the part of his brain that controlled the Quantum all Novas had access to, and would let Mal severely deplete it of power. Not permanently, but enough to leave Patriot weakened for nearly a month, where he might see how valuable he was to these people with his powers restricted.

That was the plan, anyway. Instead, Mal's eyes flew open in surprise. "Where . . . where is it? Where is your power? I can't find it!"

At the same moment he became aware that something was pushing back against his energy stream. Looking up, he saw Patriot flying forward, one hand lifted and actually blocking the wave of energy, the hand cocked back in a ready fist. And before Mal could react, Patriot smashed said fist across Mal's face, sending him hurtling to the ground with enough force to leave a sizable crater in the White House lawn.

Mal groggily got to his feet, shaking his head at the weird dizziness that assaulted him. He hadn't been hit like that in . . . he couldn't remember. Something on his lips was irritating him, and he wiped it off with the back of his hand, only to glance down and see that it was blood. His own blood.

"This . . . this isn't possible," Mal breathed, even as his bloody image suddenly went viral across the internet.

In the skies above, Patriot suddenly a surge of power like he'd rarely felt before. Even at the height of his popularity, he'd never felt strength like this. His smile broadened as he looked down at the still confused Divis Mal. "Well, it looks like a lot of folks were looking forward to you getting taken down a peg."

The words finally shook Mal from his stupor, and he looked up just in time to see Patriot flying towards him, that fist cocked back again to deliver another blow.

"Time to give the people what they want!" Patriot yelled, and then Mal's vision was completely filled with Patriot's fist.

Aberrant / Paragons: Brave New World

• • • • •

This was something else I found on RPG.net that I decided to repost here. It was initially inspired by the work of Kreuzritter in his character builds thread, and I had decided to take a look at two separate games that posited the same question: "What if the world outside your window suddenly became filled with normal people who'd gained superpowers?"

White Wolf asked this question with their game Aberrant in 1999, while Green Ronin would ask the same question in 2007 with their game Pagarons. Both games featured equal amounts of people following and deconstructing superhero tropes, and both are interesting in how they went in very different directions in several respects.

At its heart, Aberrant was a very controlled, precise setting. Its history was written in stone to lead up to the Trinity setting, and the overall metaplot was going in that direction. While individual games could happen in the time between the coming of Novas and the Aberrant Wars, the game was very much on rails in terms of several events that were going to happen. This included elements such as extremely overpowered NPCs to keep the setting on track, and a few adventures where the players were basically suppose to sit back and let said NPCs act out the climax of the story.

On the flip side, Paragons was designed to be a sandbox / toybox of ideas that you could keep or discard at will, with no metaplot to speak of. You could toss out entire sections of the book and not affect the other parts in the slightest, and GMs were given complete freedom to do what they wanted. In some ways, however, this became too much freedom, as the setting lacks cohesion and direction, and can feel somewhat aimless.

Aberrant often strangled any players attempting to answer the question of "What would you do with the power to change the world", while Paragons asked the GM to do much more work in figuring their setting out. In a sense, you had a lack of freedom juxtaposed with anarchy.

The settings were different in other ways as well. In Aberrant, there was a single, pseudo-science explanation for Novas, while Paragons allowed for whatever origin you wanted, even multiple origins and power types, and the existence of magic. Aberrant tended towards deconstruction, while Paragons seemed to allow for genuine superheroes while also having some deconstruction elements.

The two do make for an interesting pair to contrast against each other. This thread is basically to take that idea and run with it. So people with experience in either game, feel free to share your stories, the good and bad, as well as your thoughts on both settings, and how they fix together/compare with each other. What did you like/hate about both settings? What do you think could have been done to fix them?

The idea of a crossover itself, I'd be curious how folks would handle that aspect as well. Would you do some kind of dimensional crossover, akin to that Ultimates/Supreme Powers crossover Marvel did years back? Would you have a combined setting where elements of both have always existed in the same world, and see how things play out differently?

Regarding how those settings would crossover, I had three different ideas:

•Paragons start appearing in the Aberrant setting: In the Aberrant setting, Novas are somewhat scientifically understood. They all get their powers from this node in their brain, they channel sub-quantum energies that let them mess with reality, etc. Paragons often have no unified power source or origin, can include very weird phenomena that might not be of human origin, and there's the possibility of outright magic in the setting. The appearance of non-nova superhumans would pretty much upset things even more, drive Project: Proteus absolutely nuts, and splinter factions even more.

•Novas start showing up in the Paragons setting: In the opposite setting, Novas would be a specific type of Paragon who all have a unified set of abilities and origins, being more "scientifically grounded" and widespread than other Paragons. In this case, Divis Mal is likely a Paragon who found a way to spread his unique origin type to other people via N-Day, possibly due to the Hammersmith incident making his abilities transferable. It could theoretically explain how "Taint" works, since a Paragon's abilities are likely very much keyed to an individual, while Novas would be essentially a template "designed" for Mal that gets shoved onto other folks. The Taint is their body essentially "rejecting" aspects of their powers that don't fit their persona. This would likely make Novas more widespread than other Paragons, possibly the "mutants" of the setting, and numerous enough to have specific organizations. Elites and the Terragen could exist pretty much as is, while Project: Utopia might need some re-working in how it relates to the Vanguard. Utopia might be seen as a group who does more philanthropic work while Vanguard are the actual superheroes, and Team Tomorrow are seen largely as posers trying to be superheroes without the training or experience. It could also lead to scenes like the above with Divis Mal, where he assumes that, being the most powerful Nova he's the most powerful Paragon as well, is thus in for a rude awakening.

•The two settings are separate, but begin to crossover as part of some event: This is more of a "red skies" crossover where Paragons and Aberrant are sort Earth 1 and Earth 2 to each other, existing separately across a dimensional rift. Until something makes that separation weaken, and you have the worlds intersecting at points, characters crossing over, battles happening, etc. Perhaps someone is causing this, perhaps it's some type of cosmic event, but the result is that both universes are aware of each other for the first time. There might even become places that simultaneously exist in both worlds that can serve as crossover points, like a city that exists in both worlds, but if you exit via North you wind up in Paragons, while if you exit South you wind up in Aberrant. Here it becomes a question of very different worlds rubbing up against each other and having to figure out how to co-exist.

Hmm. Honestly, the first option might work best - the multitude of origins/causes & Fortean Events would fit well as a resurgence of the particularly weird and unusual present in the chronologically preceding Adventure! timeframe.

The Pact and Silas the Elder for instance, would make a very appropriate enemy of the original Aeon Society - still around, holding their occult lore and connections. The irony that a founder of Aeon is now Divis Mal, trying to tear it down with baseline society never ceases to amuse Silas.

GamesImago in New Vindicators Academy of EuropeVortex in Force OPsEvan Roadbound in The Golden Wheel TurnsPeter Ezima in In the Shadow of Imperator

Hmm. Honestly, the first option might work best - the multitude of origins/causes & Fortean Events would fit well as a resurgence of the particularly weird and unusual present in the chronologically preceding Adventure! timeframe.

The Pact and Silas the Elder for instance, would make a very appropriate enemy of the original Aeon Society - still around, holding their occult lore and connections. The irony that a founder of Aeon is now Divis Mal, trying to tear it down with baseline society never ceases to amuse Silas.

I think if that was the route to take things, then #2 might work better. Both 1 & 2 presume that the players of both settings exist in the same world, it's just a matter of the "chicken or the egg" of which setting has prominence.

If we have a primary Paragons setting in which Novas start to appear, then the Aeon Society would mostly be a collection of Paragons, under the assumption that the Hammersmith incident being the source their powers, rather than just the trigger for them. It would also allow for older conspiracies to exist, magic to exist, so on and so forth.

I'd also probably keep the option that Divis Mal basically kicked off the "modern age of heroes" much as he did in the Aberrant setting. As there, Mal is a self-absorbed dingus who assumed that everyone's powers must work the same way his does, so he tried to recreate the Hammersmith incident, only with himself as the power source. What he wound up doing is basically imprinting his own Paragon nature onto a good 40-to-50% of the potential Paragons of the world, so that when their own abilities triggered, they basically worked in a way similar to Mal's, IE via the manipulation of Quantum Energy, which would have been something either unique to Mal or something rare in the Paragons community.

This is why Taint works the way it does with Novas: They have the abilities that they would have had if their powers had occurred naturally, but now they effectively have to work through a Quantum filter. When they use their powers safely, it allows their bodies to adapt to the Quantum Node, lets them grow more powerful, and eventually their bodies will "even out" and become more like what they were intended. If they push their abilities too hard, too fast, then the Quantum sort of bleeds into their body and builds up like a cancer. If they don't give their bodies time to process and "digest" that excess Quantum, then it starts to mutate their bodies in ways that make them more effective at channeling Quantum. This results in the various Taint-based mutations.

On the plus side, Novas tend to erupt/have their origins far easier than most Paragons do, explaining the initial surge of Novas in the setting and the idea that all Paragons are Novas. The downside is that while their abilities are activated easier, their abilities grow at a slower rate due to the whole Quantum adaptation/Taint issue listed above. This is why Mal is generally way more powerful than most Novas, and why he can directly influence their abilities: he's made a good chunk of the potential Paragons of the world more like himself, which has effectively stunted their growth.

On the plus side, the appearance of Novas has also made it a little easier for other Paragons to manifest their abilities. Some credit this to the Imageria's energies flooding into the world and empowering more Paragons. Basically, Novas inspired ordinary people's imagination and sense of wonder, causing them to completely re-imagine what was and wasn't possible in this universe. As a result of all that "wonder and imagination", the Imageria lit up like a Christmas tree, and the rise of more "mythic" Paragons appeared.

Likewise, the Nova-spawned advances in science have caused more Science-based Paragons to appear as well. So Mal DID effectively create his new age of gods, he just did it in a way that was possibly more harmful to half of them than it needed to be.

This keeps Mal as "merely" a contender for most powerful guy on the planet, with several others being able to actually challenge him.

Part of me does like the "Red Skies Crossover" idea, if only for scenes like the Vanguard vs Team Tomorrow one I wrote.

If going with the second option, it would be interesting to see how things change for both settings.

Would the Teragen (why did I keep adding a second "r" in there?) accept non-Nova Paragons, once it was discovered that there was a difference? Possibly, but I imagine it'd be more of a rare instance, and only done for truly dangerous Paragons like Proteus. Otherwise I see them sticking mostly to Novas.

I definitely see the Teragen and the Pantheon opposing one another, ironically with both sides thinking the other is crazy. While Divis Mal might couch his terminology with words like "gods", it's mostly because he's kind of pompous. Mal doesn't actually think of himself as a god, and he definitely doesn't want worshipers. He didn't like normal people when he technically qualified as one, he definitely doesn't want to be around them now that he's got legit superpowers. But at the same time, he's got a huge ego that demands he make these grandiose gestures that gets everyone's attention. In many ways, he's a maladjusted, egocentric man still smarting because this one guy he had a crush on only wanted to be friends. So the Teragen leadership tends to view the Pantheon as dangerous nutjobs and religious zealots.

The Pantheon leadership, however, do legitimate believe they are gods, and there is some evidence to support that some of their number do actually grow stronger with worship (though whether this is real or a Magic Feather placebo is unknown). As such, they tend to view the Teragen as moody teenagers lashing out at a world they should be ruling, and showing contempt for the people that should be worshipping them. The fact that the Pantheon DOES protect their mortal worshipers have brought the two organizations into direct conflict several times.

Incidentally, outside of the leadership and "true believers" to both groups ideology, a good chunk of both the Teragen and the Pantheon's members tend to be pretty similar. They generally view themselves as superior to normal people, and want to use their abilities without suffering the consequences of the law. What determines which group they go to is largely a matter of their attitude towards normal people. The Teragen are often more bitter and outright hateful of normal people, lacking a desire to spend time with them and frequently wanting to do them harm. The Pantheon, meanwhile, still value the company of normal people, even if it's more reminiscent of a master and a favored bunch of slaves. The Pantheon generally enjoy socializing with normal people (albeit, on their own terms) while the Teragen does not.

I also wonder how WOULD the Vanguard and Team Tomorrow interact with one another? In both settings, both groups have a relationship with the United Nations to give them "official" status. The United Nations granting Project Utopia an advisory seat on the UN Council, while the Vanguard was basically given backing by the UN to act as a global peace keeping force.

I think if I was going to have them both exist in the same setting, then I think I'd play it as Project Utopia appearing first, and getting their advisory seat on the UN, with Team Tomorrow initially acting as the UN's "Justice League". But while T2M was initially successful in that role, Doctor Jerimiah Prophet could see a problem even without his newly emerged psychic visions. See, while T2M had some success against normal criminals and terrorists, even some groups of Novas, T2M was largely normal people without combat training or experience who were use to other types of humanitarian aid. They tended to be people who did rescue services, helped teraform locations, and other such things. The first time they went up a group of experienced Nova Mercenaries, the T2M group lost hard.

Prophet's abilities let him see that happening almost a year beforehand, and so he started working on his own team, using every resource at his disposal to find suitable Paragons, working with elements of various governments (including a Colonel in the United States military), so that by the time the time T2M was getting their butts kicked, Prophet's Vanguard team swept in to turn the tide.

Prophet then brought his group before the UN and made his pitch, stressing the need for a team of combat trained peace keepers who could act on their own to safeguard the world. His proposal was also backed by several high ranking members of many governments, most prominently the United States. While the USA had issues with Project Utopia, Prophet had shown a willingness to play ball with the government, and many of Vanguard's members were American citizens. However, Project Utopia had their own issues given their advisory position, as well as feeling upstaged by this new group. Eventually, a compromise was reached. The Vanguard would be based in the United States, but have authority to act across the globe in UN Nations. Team Tomorrow could likewise still act as a peacekeeping force, since there was no shortage of trouble in the world. Any overlap in investigations the two groups were working on were expected to become joint ventures where both groups would share information and help the other.

Publicly, the Vanguard and Team Tomorrow are two separate groups with the same mission who work together to police the world. Privately, individual members have wildly different thoughts on each other. Many in Project Utopia see the Vanguard as muscling in on their territory, with Caestus Pax especially despising the other team. Likewise, many Vanguard members see T2M as a bunch of posers who look good for the camera but have little actual combat experience. While the two groups have never come to blows, it seems inevitable. On the flip side, there are members of both groups who like and support the other, and would love more opportunities to work together.

Personally,i'm more in favor of the "Red Skies" option,as it gives you more of that 'Comic Book' feel.It'll work especially well if you have 2 gm's in your group.One's a player in Aberrant while the other's a player in Paragons.To make an intresting twist,they were supposed to be born in the others' Reality and something is trying to take them out to correct the problem,hence why the Wall's breaking down......

I like the "Red Skies" idea, myself, if only because I've always wanted to punch Cestus Pax in his smug face.

Such a satisfying thing to do only thing more satisfying would be a jacuzzi after a long hard day

even more fun watching the moron try to explain away how he got punched clear from LAX to the grand Canyon.

I don't know,those he could walk away from.How about making him think he was a Gerbil for a day and getting it all on tape,then broadcasting it to both worlds.THAT would do more damage than any punch could ever do.....

Yeah, I admit the Red Skies crossover would be a lot of fun, and I agree that both Pax and Divis Mal have very punchably smug faces. Then again, I did include a bit where Mal specifically gets taken down a peg in that opening post. Because screw the both of those egotistical jackasses.

The Red Skies would be fun for a purely "crossover" type feel, the different groups having to encounter each other, deal with one another, before the universes either go their separate ways or become permanently merged.

Meanwhile a "they've always been the same world" setting probably has more fun long-term RPing options, barring a universe merger above.

And I'll admit, that opening fiction sort of flip-flops between the two types, going with whatever was more fun at time.

What about a “War of the Worlds” scenario where some cosmic wedgie has fused the two worlds, with people’s memories being rewritten to think it’s always been this way... and the heroes (somehow immune to the retcon, ‘natch) need to battle each other to determine which world survives?

speaking as this thread's inspiration, I prefer a post-crisis blending, equal parts paragons and aberrant. certainly there are a number of elements that are complimentary (Pantheon and Zero Latitude are depicted with the sort of reach one expects when first hearing about Aberrant), and in terms of power it's a simple enough matter to scale things so say, Mal is now merely "arguably" the most powerful being on the planet, instead of being a pre-primordial Malfeas, while Project Proteus has a few other conspiracies to compete against.

as for the nova/psychic/paramorph split, i'm sure more than a few Paragons would be Novas (or vice versa), and considering even the basic premise means throwing the timeline out the window, I see no problem with Paramorphs starting to crop up (heck, one can make the sudden lack of long term predestination a plot point), and you've got things like The House That Hate Built, which defy explanation

which brings us to the Pact, which is just vaguely defined enough that one could rework the Mage traditions into being secret players